Product Collective - 🧰 The role of Product Ops

Product Operations

Product operations, or "Product Ops," is a pivotal function in product management, focusing on four key pillars as described by Jenny Wanger: leveraging data, grasping user needs, team ownership, and cross-departmental communication. While the role of a product manager is often clear, distinguishing when to introduce a product ops specialist remains ambiguous, as noted by Blake Thorne. Tomas Prochazka provides guidance on creating product ops job descriptions, acknowledging its novelty in the field. Melany Bascome emphasizes product ops' role in scaling businesses and bolstering product management efficiency. GitLab transparently demonstrates its use of Product Ops to refine their processes and enhance feedback loops.

What is Product Ops? The four pillars you need to understand deeply. The best leaders approach product ops with a product mindset. And, as with a product, you need to understand what is in and out of scope to define your solutions. Jenny Wanger breaks product ops down into four key areas: using data; understanding users; team ownership; and cross-departmental communication. This four-part product operations framework helps her structure and assess how an organization works together. She uses this as a lens through which she conducts user research, ideates, and experiments with solutions. (via Mind the Product)

Product operations vs. product manager: Where each role fits in. Most companies can tell when they should bring in a product manager. With product ops, it’s a whole different story. Not every team needs a product operations specialist. And most companies simply don’t know what this role should cover or whether they’re ready to hire someone in this position or not. Blake Thorne put together this guide to cover when you should add a product operations specialist to your team and how to differentiate the product ops role from the product manager role. (via LaunchNotes) 

 Continues below...

How to write a job description for a product operations manager. ProdOps is a relatively new field within product management. So few hiring managers know what a product operations job description should actually look like. That’s why Tomas Prochazka put together this guide for writing a product operations manager job description.  (via airfocus)

What is product operations and why it might be important for you. Scaling up a product—and a business—has its challenges. Products expand their features, product management teams get bigger, and systems and processes become more complex. The solution to ensure a smooth flow without harsh growing pains? A product operations manager. Melany Bascome explains what the product operations role is and how it supports business growth while improving the product management team's productivity. (via Hotjar) 

Product Operations at GitLab. GitLab makes it a common practice to make their process documentation available to the public. This page explains how GitLab uses Product Ops to enable the Product Division to operate more efficiently, and consistently across all groups, stages, and sections. They optimize and automate workflows, improve upon practices, and scale how product management can consistently receive feedback and act on it. (via GitLab)